Faye’s IV sets are wildly different from most other archers. Instead of prioritizing speed, Faye instead would rather keep her defenses high and sacrifice speed. Attack is as important as always, especially with her low base 30 in the stat.

Boons

+ATK: Faye’s optimum boon is attack. She uses a low might weapon and with only 30 base attack, she needs all the help she can get to secure KO’s.

Neutral

RES: Faye is primarily a magic tank, so she does not want to reduce her Resistance. This is her most important defensive stat.

HP: As this affects her overall bulk , she would rather not reduce this. It also makes it harder to trigger Panic Ploy.

DEF: Defense is her least important defensive stat, but she needs it to tank hits from archers. A bane in this stat results in a reduction of four, making this undesirable.

Banes

-SPD: Speed is Faye’s only bane without drawbacks. She does not need speed due to Quick Riposte guaranteeing follow-ups and her massive defenses sparing her from damage.

Faye's optimum build gives her the best matchup spread vs. ranged attackers. And since her role is so niche, there isn’t much room for flexibility here. Faye’s build is designed to make her a hard counter to nearly every ranged attacker in the game. It’s her only job and one she is very good at.

The core element of the build is stacking levels of Distant Def. When Faye uses a Guard Bow and Distant Def in her A slot, she gains +12 to her defensive stats, giving her an effective 41 Defense and 43 Resistance. This is helped in part by a +Def refine on her weapon to bring her Defense to a solid base 29.

In order to fix up Faye’s speed, Quick Riposte is taken in her Seal Slot. The addition of this seal is excellent for Faye, as she can now use her B slot for Cancel Affinity. Previously, she could only pick between one of the two skills, leaving her weak to the Triangle Adept + Raven tome combo that Cancel Affinity counters.

While her defenses are high when attacked, Faye’s base stats are only average. Combined with her low Attack, this makes Moonbow her best choice of special. It activates quickly and scales well off her low damage. The reason why Luna is not picked is because Moonbow can be activated after taking a single double-attack from a Brave Bow user. Faye is very susceptible to quad-attacks, and she needs to KO Brave Bow users before they can do this.

Like most builds, she’s reasonably flexible with her Assist and C slot skill. Panic Ploy is a good reliable choice that helps Faye beat excessively buffed Blade Tome users, or units such as Reinhardt who can get a large merge advantage over Faye. She isn’t the best general user of Panic Ploy, but her HP is high enough to activate it onto the targets she needs to.

Faye is a great sub on many teams and if you don’t want to use Panic Ploy, Smoke skills are recommended due to being strong in general combat situations. Draw Back and Reposition both let Faye support other attackers on her team, and the choice of which is largely up to the player and their personal preferences.

This build is similar in purpose and construction to the above build. However, it differs in one major way: Cancel Affinity is dropped for Quick Riposte in Faye's B slot, which leaves her Sacred seal open to take Distant Def. This gives Faye a whopping +18 to her defensive stats when attacked from range. However, this means that Faye will be helpless against Triangle Adept + Raven tome users.

If looking to use her in Arena Assault, this build is stronger. Iceberg's damage is incredibly high when boosted by Distant Def, but it will be much weaker when initiating combat. If one doesn't need to Panic Ploy dangerous Blade tome users, Def Ploy is a solid choice to boost Faye's damage. Functionally this set can be used in much of the same way as her optimal one can.

Introduction

Hailing from Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia, Faye is an infantry archer who does not fit the typical archetype for an archer. Other archers are offensively oriented with good offensive stats and usually aim to destroy foes with a Firesweep or Brave Bow.

Faye on the other hand, has 30/25 offenses, the worst of any archer. In exchange for this, she has a whopping 42 HP and 26/30 Defense and Resistance. Her unusual stat distribution means that she is better at taking hits than giving hits.

Overall , this makes Faye a monstrous anti-mage unit. When given the correct skills, she is a defensive powerhouse that makes mincemeat of ranged attackers. She is useless outside of this niche, but regardless she does her job extremely well. She is a fantastic unit for modes like Grand Hero Battles and Squad Assault due to her reliability at slaying ranged attackers.

Strengths

Exceptional mixed defenses.

26/31 base Defense and Resistance makes Faye tough to KO with physical or magic damage. These stats are also coupled with an impressive 42 HP, improved further through weapon refines. Guard Bow and Distant Defense only serve to make her defenses even more impenetrable.

Has a near-perfect matchup spread vs. ranged attackers.

Faye’s excellent defensive stats mean that she can tank and KO every mage in the game. She also beats the vast majority of archer and dagger units. Faye is one of the most reliable niche units available.

Weaknesses

Useless outside of her niche.

As mentioned earlier, Faye’s ability to beat ranged attackers is second to none. However, outside of those matchups, she is relatively useless. She can be used to KO some fliers, but with her low Attack this can be tough even with the damage bonus.

Vulnerable to melee attackers.

Faye’s low Speed means that it’s very easy to double her. She relies on her exceptional defenses to make up for this weakness. Since she relies on Guard Bow and Distant Defense, melee attackers can cut through her fairly easily.

Team Options

Boasting the ability to beat all mages makes Faye a valuable teammate for many allies. Low-Resistance units are dime a dozen, and Faye makes good partners with the vast majority of them. In addition, she requires no support to be able to do her job and does not care about color advantage in the slightest.

Melee Tanks: While most tanks now run a form of Distant Counter, many such as Brave Ike and Lucina commonly do not. Faye is a great ally for any low-Resistance physical tank such as Nephenee, Minerva, and Eldigan.

Mages: Mages typically have low defense and many opt to reduce it as their optimal bane. Faye can handle archers for mages such as Nino, Soren, Celica, Linde and Reinhardt.

Fliers: Faye soaks up arrows for these guys, making her a nice sub onto a Flier duo or trio. Elincia, Camilla, Myrrh, Tana, and Cordelia love having Faye around.

Counters

Faye might have the most straightforward list of counters in the game. She dies to nearly every melee attacker, making her deadliest threats those who can close the gap to her easily.

Any unit that can attack from melee range: Faye’s low speed and reliance on Distant Defense mean that she will die to nearly every physical attacker in the game. Cavalry and Flier melee units in particular can surprise Faye with their movement and KO her. Sigurd, Oscar, Tana, Cordelia and Cherche will obliterate Faye if they can attack.

Halloween Jakob and Bridal Cordelia: Halloween Jakob is the only archer who beats Faye 100% of the time. Even Firesweep Lyn and Cordelia can attack Faye with impunity, but die if Faye counterattacks the next turn. What makes him so deadly is that Faye cannot avoid being quad-attacked by him, and he deals enough damage to punch through Faye’s Defense. Bridal Cordelia can also beat Faye with a Resistance or Speed bane.

User Submitted Builds

I saved up a bunch of orbs when I heard there would be a Nohr banner thinking OG Charlotte would be on it. She wasn’t, and I spent them all on another banner in protest. I got Faye, and I vowed to make her incredible so even if I didn’t have Charlotte, I’d have something good.

So uh. DD9. Bonfire. Death and destruction. Probably would be better off with Def Smoke but not sure I’m willing to fodder my only Bunfonse yet.

This is a Faye build that completely maxes her Speed out to the point to where she can actually obtain doubles. With the newly released Cocobow, on initiation, allows her to achieve +2 to all 4 stats allowing her to reach the 40 speed mark! Then, add in Spd Wave it can reach 46 Speed! Finally, Chill Spd will drop the highest Speed enemy unit on the battle field by 7 putting her in prime position to double any unit in the battlefield. If you are like me and choose to summon support her this build even have more promise! (Stats shown are WITHOUT a summon support.)

Faye can already run a basic Brave Bow build fine given her statline but what if you were to take it further and give her access to Chill Def and Odd Atk Wave? You have a Faye that has 19 Effective Atk power on initiation. Thats a lot of stopping power that could wipe out some of even the most stout units! On odd turns and on initiation, Faye will reach 55 Atk with her Brave Bow! Speed is an easy dump stat given this focuses on raw Player Phase attack power.

This is my Bread-N-Butter Faye build given the IVs I've received. Quick Riposte is substituted for Guard given the possibility of Quickened Pulse+Moonbow mages to prevent chunking of Faye's HP which could possibly kill the benefit of one's Quick Riposte build. With this build you will have enough Defense to stiff even the likes of Halloween Jakob with his Brave Bow + Bold Fighter build and enough stacked Resistance to defeat any mage you come across. For optimal performance you will need +Def or Res. +Def helps against archers the most whilst +Res will help in ploying with your C skill

While normally optimized for an enemy phase ranged baiter due to her low speed, this build seeks to transition Faye into more of a flexible Mixed Phase unit. While 31 resistance isn’t sufficient to hit ploys on all of the major threats, Faye is fairly capable of one shotting most fliers which would typically be the only units capable of avoiding being doubled while in Brazen range and having enough Res to avoid a Speed ploy from her.

Faye should be used to support a moderately tanky front liner and can heal for quite a bit with her substantial health pool of 44 after Gratia’s refinement. After baiting an opposing Mage or healing an ally, Faye easily can land into both Brazen and Desperation range allowing her to sweep a number of common threats and with assistance from speed ploy, none of the fast Armors/Infantry would be safe from her doubles.
Since she is likely to always be lacking in either attack or speed, it is not possible for her to ORKO a neutral Hardin or other more physically bulky armors without support, however, if run on a team with Speed buffs, it’s possible to forego the speed seal in favor of attack to confirm ORKO’s against units such as Ayra who would normally survive just barely.

Faye is a unit that needs a significant amount of investment and support to function as well as the top bow units in game, however, she trades straightforward power for utility. If you’re as devoted to Faye as she is to Alm, then go ahead and show her what appreciation looks like.